Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Deal with Jesus Christ

"Christianity is the only world faith based on the identity of its Founder, rather than on His teachings.. which means that anybody wanting to destroy Christianity must deal with Jesus Christ."  -- John Blanchard

This excellent observation emphasizes afresh (1) the uniqueness of Christianity, and (2) the need we have to keep our evangelistic presentations Christ-centered. The enemy loves to use the tactic of trivializing by duplication as a smoke screen to hide the truth.  At the time our Lord 'came on the scene,' there were multiple men making Messianic claims and gathering followers.  By planting a plethora of fakes, Satan sought to trivialize the impact of the Lord Jesus' claims.  This could explain much behind the numerous times the Lord Jesus spoke of being sent (John 3:17; 17:3, 8, 21, 23, 25), to cite a few.  The sheer number of times He mentioned it speaks to its importance for Him.


  His personal presence, His flawless life, and His authenticating miracles, all confirmed the truthfulness of His words.  Still, sad to say, His words are often distorted (putting the person's prejudiced "spin" on them), in an effort to avoid His sovereignty.  Too, the enemy enjoys re-direction, steering clear of the issue, by highlighting the hypocrisy of church members.


Yet I have found that, when handed the church's hypocrisy as the supposed final, unanswerable justification for the lost person's refusal to embrace Christianity, what's needed is to agree (!)... "Yes, that's true, (which produces a mild shock)...but what about Jesus?  Where is His hypocrisy?  After all, at the time of judgment you won't be standing before any church members, hypocrites or not.  It is the Lord Jesus before whom you'll stand.  What are you going to do about Him?"

  Haven't heard a criticism of the Master yet.  Faced with simply Him, the force of the choice is powerfully felt.  Then, having had a nose-to-nose encounter with the Savior, the individual goes away mad, sad, or glad.  But that's up to the Lord... our responsibility is to present Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  

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